Just Blaze Doesn’t Want Slaughterhouse To Try To Out-Rap Each Other On New Album

Just Blaze has been working for months as the executive producer Slaughterhouse's star-studded upcoming sophomore album Glasshouse, and he recently spoke with XXL about his vision for that project, and how things have come together.

"I'm producing the Slaughterhouse album right now," the veteran producer said. "And my thing with that album is that I didn’t want it to be an album full of them trying to out-rap each other. I wanted them to actually be together during a majority of the process of the album as a group and just make things a little bit more rounded."

Blaze echoed what Joell Ortiz told XXL last year, that the album has come together more coherently than any of their other projects to date. "The object is to try to make Slaughterhouse one person," Ortiz said at the time. "Like, when people refer to it, not like, 'Yo, did you hear Royce’s verse? Did you hear Joell’s verse?' Just to be like, 'This is Slaughterhouse shit, man.'”

Blaze agreed with that take on the album-creation process. "We all know you guys can rap," he said, referring to the group that also includes Joe Budden and Crooked I. "But now you need to get past the rap phase and get into the song phase. And make sure that all these songs make sense together. That was my objective; making it an album of songs, not just raps or beats. In this day and age that's not that hard to deliver. The challenge is delivering a cohesive product from start to finish."

Just Blaze has a deep-rooted history with Budden, Slaughterhouse, and Shady Records. He and Budden have been working together since the "Pump It Up" days, and Blaze and Slaughterhouse collaborated on "Session One," a bonus track off Eminem's Recovery album.

Blaze touched on his close relationship with Shady Records, and how he plans to work in tandem to bring Glasshouse to life.

"With the Slaughterhouse project, it will definitely be hands-on, but it's obviously a Shady Records affair," Blaze explained. "Shady's like family to me, so it's up to me to just look at the product, and from there, it's on Shady to actually sell it." —Layne Weiss